Cellar Door

Reading Cathy Marston’s article about her attitude towards wine education got me thinking about the way that we, as producers, approach the subject. One of the coolest shifts in the South African (and international) wine scene over the last ten years has been how much of the pretension around wine has started to be broken down. [...]

Having just completed the questionnaire for our next tasting room staff quiz, I got an update from our tasting room manager, Neil du Plessis, on our ongoing training and service development at the farm. Fairview is fortunate to have a large number of visitors to the farm each year, who spend time in our cheese [...]

As a wine farm that has invested a fair amount of time and money at its cellar door, we do our best to make sure that the experience of our guests gets as much attention as our wines do in the cellar. We love to have people at the farm, and it gives our team [...]

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to attend a short course on wine consumer behaviour at the UCT Graduate School of Business. One of the things that was mentioned then was that as a general rule, wine consumers have a core of five brands that they trust and buy regularly, and will venture [...]

The annual Diners Club Wine List of the Year contest is back and looking for entries from South Africa’s top restaurants. The quality of the leading restaurants in our country can not be disputed and we continue to see recognition given through international competitions and visitor voting (with feet and credit cards) alike. This contest [...]

On Tuesday last week I attended the South African Wine Tourism Conference, which was hosted at the Vineyard Hotel in Claremont. Aside from the obvious area of focus that its name implies, the conference’s theme was: Share. Innovate. Inspire. It was a chance to come together and chat about some of the key challenges and [...]

The motivation for this post started with a piece of cheese… We have just recently received the Camembert Gold medal at the World Cheese Awards (WCA) in London, for the 4th time in seven years. This is a fantastic achievement, in a very competitive category. So, does this position our Roydon as one of the [...]